Two Poems

The Fishermen

There comes trudging back across the home paddocks of the bay
pushing its way
waist-deep in the trembling seed-heads of the light
a trawler, with flat roof and nets aloft,
with its motor that thumps like an irrigation pump
and a winch triangulate
on the monolithic cloud. And this cloud is straining out the sunrise
of a Bible tract
that shows the few lumps of islands and just the one boat
in the blazing sand-box of the sea,
while close-up the edges of such a volatile kind of grit
are being swept ashore.

It's all noticed by a cyclist on the wet asphalt, who takes a corner
above the banksia scrub,
by someone in pyjama stripes and venetian slats of light
...